Empowering Your Kids About Healthy Body Image Starts with YOU

You need to talk with your children and students about healthy body image. But, how can you talk to them if you aren’t sure what healthy body image is? We have been flooded for decades with what we ‘think’ healthy body image is, only to religiously count calories, go on fad diets, exercise profusely and feel guilty for eating a dessert. The media are saturated with focusing on weight loss and depicting skinny girls and boys – because this is what we should be. We also give excuses for thinking it’s okay to skip meals: “I’m too busy to eat; I shouldn’t eat as much today because I ate a lot last night; I need to fit in those pants.” This is the core of American culture’s perception of what healthy body image is.

To have this conversation, it needs to happen with you first. Use these tools to facilitate exploration within yourself so you know how to convey this to your kids